Advertisers blamed for increasing child sexualisation

Updated
April 29, 2011 15:00:00

Advertisers have been accused of acting like sexual predators in their efforts to sell products. Child development experts and social researchers say the evidence is mounting that modern 'raunch culture' is causing increasing mental and physical health problems in children.

EMILY BOURKE: Sex has long been used as a tool of advertisers to sell everything from kitchen utensils to cars and in recent years there have been growing concerns about the impact a culture of raunch and titillation is having on children.

At a conference in Sydney today, evidence has been presented that it's sexualising children as young as three and several speakers have gone so far as to accuse the advertising industry of adopting the same methods as sexual predators.

Lucy Carter reports.

LUCY CARTER: It's no secret that sex sells. For decades images of scantily clad women and men have been used to peddle products but now experts say they are seeing strong evidence of what this culture of raunch is doing to children,

MAGGIE HAMILTON: We are seeing a new level of sexual assault happening in primary schools. We are also seeing sexting happening from little girls eight-up who are taking photos of themselves topless and sending them around to little boys aged eight or putting it on the net.

We are seeing identification with a very sexualised kind of persona.

LUCY CARTER: Writer and social researcher Melinda Tankard Reist says she's sickened by deliberate marketing - often with sexual undertones - to children as young as six months.

MELINDA TANKARD REIST: They are very callous. I mean this is one of the reasons we use the term corporate paedophilia because corporations are in a sense abusing children. They are driving childhood out of children and we see this as a systemic assault on childhood.

LUCY CARTER: Both women are speaking today at the Right 2 Childhood conference in Sydney,

Maggie Hamilton says her research indicates that modern advertising is becoming increasingly exploitative, especially towards children

MAGGIE HAMILTON: I have done a paper recently which looks at how the corporations do market products whether it is clothing or cosmetics or whatever, toys to kids and interestingly, they use exactly the same tools as sexual predators do to groom children. They actively try to separate kids from parents and the kind of languaging, we're cool, you're parents are kind of idiots.

They offer gifts, they pretend friendship etc etc and most importantly, they raunch up the material over a period of time and with a sexual predator that means then a child is willing to start to do whatever and with a corporation, it means the children don't resist spending.

LUCY CARTER: Melinda Tankard Reist says parents must take a stand against advertisers selling to their children.

MELINDA TANKARD REIST: Parents need to be vigilant, they need to not buy into the culture.

LUCY CARTER: Social researcher Maggie Hamilton says parents must also recognise the world their children are growing up in, and be sympathetic towards it.

MAGGIE HAMILTON: Kids don't need a 40-year-old best friend but they do need parents who actively engage in nurturing, who have an open culture in the house, who are prepared to talk about anything and everything.

LUCY CARTER: Ms Hamilton says the Government also needs to act.

MAGGIE HAMILTON: I never thought I would say this but we do need far more regulation. One of the problems with the advertising standards board is that it is an industry regulated body and I think that is inherently flawed.

LUCY CARTER: But the chief executive officer of the Advertising Standards Bureau, Fiona Jolley, disagrees. She says the current system of self regulation is working.

FIONA JOLLEY: The advertising self regulation system provides more effective outcomes than any legislated scheme in Australia could. We have compliance with board decisions across the board by advertisers. We have an accessible, transparent, a robust system and it meets, we do research regularly to make sure that the decisions of the board broadly meet the community standards.